There are a variety of toilet plungers that have been designed and, marketed. Designs ranges from a simple cup shaped plunger to more elaborate bellow plungers, the later being seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,745,641 and which is incorporated herein by reference.
Other plunger designs can be seen such as the one depicted in US Publication No. 2014/0115768 and U.S. Pat. No. 8,782,822 and which are incorporated herein by reference. In the above referenced design, a smaller diameter flange member is positioned beneath a larger diameter cup portion of a plunger.
These and other prior art designs suffer from a variety of problems the first of which is that they are relatively inefficient, frequently requiring several cycles of use to clear a clog. Every time they are pushed or pulled without clearing the clog introduces the possibility of an unsanitary “splash back”. The inefficiency of these former designs results from a poor seal between the plunger and the toilet and the attempt to clear the clog by vigorous pushing instead of by suction. Some other plunger designs will tend to collapse or fold toward one side, making the plunger inefficient and or being incapable of being safely operated. Other designs lack the rigidity needed to avoid a collapse when “pushed” with respect to the toilet.
Professional opinion holds that clogs are cleared more effectively with suction instead of pressure, but typical plunger designs are not designed to create suction effectively. Specifically, the neck (or flange) typically added to the cup design would be optimized for use in a pressure mode only and only if the receiving hole in the toilet is perfectly circular.
The present design incorporates the principle of a suction cup, with a “lip seal” that is optimized for creating suction, regardless of the geometry of the specific toilet it's being used on. The improvement in achievable suction is better than 60% over all other manually-operated plunger designs due to the better seal.
Accordingly, there remains room for improvement and variation within the art.